In an exclusive interview with CanadianSME Small Business Magazine, Alin Bugeag, Co-Founder and CEO of GoThru, and Alina Bugeag, Co-Founder and CFO of GoThru, share insights on how their platform has transformed the 360-degree virtual tour industry and what’s next for immersive digital experiences
Beyond GoThru, Alin and Alina have expanded their vision with Panorra, a social platform designed to make 360-degree content more accessible and interactive. In this interview, they discuss the evolution of virtual tours, the challenges SMBs face in implementing immersive content, and how AI is shaping the future of digital marketing. Their expertise and passion for innovation continue to redefine how businesses engage with customers in the virtual space.
Alin Bugeag is the Co-Founder and CEO of GoThru, a leading platform for 360-degree virtual tour publishing and Google Street View integration. With a background in software architecture and digital content creation, Alin has played a key role in shaping the virtual tour industry. GoThru offers innovative tools for businesses, photographers, and marketers to create immersive digital experiences.
Alina Bugeag is the Co-Founder and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of GoThru.With extensive experience in business operations and digital content management, she has been instrumental in scaling GoThru into a globally recognized platform for virtual tour creators and businesses.
How has GoThru evolved since its founding in 2012 to meet the changing needs of virtual tour creators and businesses?
GoThru evolved from a sole proprietorship that created virtual tours for businesses locally, to a corporation that developed a 360 software platform that allows photographers and businesses all over the world, to create custom virtual tours in a variety of markets, like tourism, real estate, visual documentation, virtual training etc.
What unique challenges do small and medium-sized businesses face when implementing virtual tours, and how does GoThru address these?
Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) can significantly benefit from virtual tours, enhancing their online presence and customer engagement. However, they often face key challenges when implementing virtual tours, including cost concerns, technical expertise, platform limitations, and hosting complexities.
GoThru addresses all of these issues, offering an affordable pricing model and Do it Yourself approach; we developed an user friendly virtual tour editor, automated image processing like our auto level functionality, comprehensive tutorials and one of the best technical support in the 360 business; GoThru allows direct Google Street View publishing, download functionality so the clients can host the virtual tour on their websites, tours are compatible on multi platforms, like desktop, mobile and VR headsets (through our GoThru Navigator app); GoThru offers flexible hosting options and optimized image delivery – GoThru ensures that virtual tours load quickly with efficient image compression and caching, minimizing bandwidth costs; with GoThru the clients can fully customize their tours by adding logos, menus, interactive hot spots, custom overlay, also GoThru’s Code Plugin allows businesses to add custom HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, making it flexible for deeper customization.
Can you share an example of a business that has successfully used GoThru to enhance its online presence and customer engagement?
We have multiple businesses that use our services and products successfully, like Mon Avenir & Providence schools, that implemented custom tours for all of their locations for virtual open houses. Another client is The Beer Store, which used the tours not only for their online presence, but for their marketing campaigns as well. We also work with the International Olympic Committee to develop internal documentation (we created super detailed virtual tours for Beijing, Tokyo, Gangwon, Paris olympic venues). Altima Dental and Dawson Dental used our services to enhance their online presence . New Horizons daycares use custom tours for marketing purposes and also to enhance customer engagement.
With the increasing importance of virtual experiences, how do you see the future of 360 virtual tours evolving, and how is GoThru preparing for these changes?
The technology will evolve more towards the use of AI, making the virtual experiences more engaging and easier to work with. GoThru is investing a lot in Research & Development because that is the only way to stay ahead and be relevant on the market. We are working with industry leaders like Insta 360 to create a seamless workflow for the Real Estate market by using AI to automatically create connections between 360 images in the virtual tour. Currently we are working on implementing the functionality of text to audio for the tours’ Points of Interest.
GoThru invested a lot of time and work into creating the first 360 social media platform, Panorra.
Panorra was developed to make 360 content more accessible to a wider audience, including casual users, photographers, businesses, and social media enthusiasts. Panorra is built for discovery, sharing, and community engagement around 360 photography.
As a co-founder, what advice would you give to other entrepreneurs looking to innovate in the digital marketing and virtual tour space?
As a co-founder in the 360 virtual tour and digital marketing space, I’ve seen firsthand the challenges and opportunities that come with building and scaling a platform like GoThru and Panorra. If you’re an entrepreneur looking to innovate in this space, my advice is to focus on automation & scalability, keep your business model flexible, stay ahead of emerging technologies, build a strong developer & partner ecosystem, create a community-driven approach, don’t get stuck in a single product roadmap – stay agile, experiment, and listen to user feedback.
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